County buys hot asphalt to fill potholes

The Monroe County Road Commission is getting as much hot asphalt as possible from a To­ledo batch plant that reopened this week for pothole repairs after being shut down for the winter.

Dean Cousino

The Monroe County Road Commission is getting as much hot asphalt as possible from a To­ledo batch plant that reopened this week for pothole repairs after being shut down for the winter.

The county is buying 70 to 100 tons of the asphalt for emergency patching along N. Dixie Hwy., Ida West Rd. and other county pri­maries that have deteriorated badly this week due to thawing conditions.

? We?re going to get as much as we can,? Randy Pierce, managing director for the road agency, said Friday. ?It?s almost unheard of for a batch plant to open in Febru­ary. They opened because the roads have blown apart.?

The Gerken plant on Detroit Ave. just south of the Ohio border opened up Wednesday and was expected to close again some­time today, Mr. Pierce said. Both the county and the Ohio Depart­ment of Transportation are get­ting asphalt for badly needed repairs because cold patching doesn?t last.

? The cold patch is a temporary fix,? the manager said. ? We?re going to use hot mix on various roads throughout the county. A lot of roads have blown out.?

County crews used the hot mix Wednesday to patch Erie Rd. between Summit St. and I- 75 in Erie Township. On Friday, crews spread the mix on N. Dixie Hwy. near Brest Rd. in Frenchtown Township and on Ida- West Rd. just east of US-23 in Summerfield Township.

?Those were two main projects, but so many have gone bad,? he said.

He cited Secor, Sterns and Summerfield Rds. as other roads that may get some of the hot mix. A county crew used cold patch Thursday night to fill a huge cra­ter that popped up on Summer­field Rd. near US- 23. Numerous cars used their four-way flashers to bypass the pothole to avoid damage, one motorist said.

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